Tennessee: Yearbook profile of a gay student provokes controversy

3:37 pm - 05/05/2012

The publication of an article about a gay student in the yearbook of Lenoir City High School has provoked outrage, after one of the board members of the school wrote a blog-post asking for the journalism teacher to be sacked, and for a police investigation into the matter.

The article was written by a female student who remains anonymous, and included for publication by James Yoakley, who teaches journalism at the school based in Tennessee, just outside of Knoxville.

However, one school board member, Van Shaver, immediately denounced the move in very strong terms on his blog, in a post titled “It’s not OK.” He called the publication of the article “despicable,” and called for an investigation by both school administrators and law enforcement into the matter. It is unclear what law, if any, the article is meant to have broken. ( Read more...Collapse )

Having explained why these assholes and their bigotry are wrong more times than I can count, and having won a bingo game from this one alone, I will forego the reasonable, calm, politely cutting response, and say this:

Mr. Van Shaver, please sit down on something sharp, on fire, or explosive, and spin until you can see Tuesday.

"If it is found or known that Mr. Yoakley or any other teacher at any time has had any conversations or discussions with this student or any other student about their sexual orientation, sexual activities or anything about their private lives prior to those students being of legal age, those teachers should be charged with child sex abuse by an authority figure and arrested."

So, by this rule, a heterosexual teacher who, say, mentions his wife, should be charged with child sex abuse? After all, he's telling them his sexual orientation...